Tag: writing

After publishing a memo about his thoughts on diversity on an internal discussion board, James Damore has been fired from Google. He’s been making the rounds online, talking about his memo, diversity, chess, and his thoughts on Google’s actions. The memo, much like everything else these days, has been very divisive. Damore has been labeled a sexist due to the comments made in the memo. Free speech advocates have come to his support, disgusted that a man lost his livelihood over his opinion. So what is James Damore? Is he an anti-diversity bigot or a victim of political correctness? The only way to find out that answer is to go to the controversial memo itself.

I pulled this version of the memo from medium.com. It has a foreword responding to the public reaction to the memo. Mr. Damore sounds reasonable here. He says he’s speaking for more than just himself. Others at Google share the same opinion. Though we will never hear from them after the firing of Mr. Damore. I agree with him here. Diversity in the workplace is a very hot topic. People shouldn’t be afraid to vocalize their opinions as long as they are professional and not inflammatory.

This introduction is intriguing to me. How he will substantiate his claims he’s making? Free and open discussion is a valuable part of the human experience. He mentions differing traits in men and women may contribute to lack of equal representation. A bold claim, but that isn’t advocating for the removal of women in the work force. He sounds okay here.

He hedges his claims on the bottom, by mentioning that he doesn’t know much outside of perspective. And he claims he himself may be biased and is open to discussing his position. He is correct in that social sciences, media, and the tech field skew to the left of political spectrum. I’m not seeing anything worth being fired over.

I don”t know if I agree with his right and left political breakdown. It’s very broad and basic. I have to agree with him that we have a culture that shames people into silence. But that is on both sides of the political spectrum. Colin Kapernick kneeled during the National Anthem and now cannot get a job in the NFL. He’s not the best quarterback, but he’s better than others that currently have jobs. He’s been blackballed for his comments on touchy subjects much like how James Damore has been.

Biological differences do exist between men and woman. This is very well-documented. Sexual dimorphism is observable in the human species. But to look at biological differences and apply them to women in the modern tech field is a huge jump. I don’t know what he could be thinking of here. Is he saying that women are lacking in something to be successful or that they are biologically programmed to dislike working in the tech field? He will have to have strong evidence to support either claim.

And this is where Mr. Damore got himself into trouble. His first citation is a Wikipedia link. Not the most credible of sources. My understanding of the first bullet is that he is claiming women are more social creatures than men and prefer to work with people than isolated in rooms with computers. I don’t find that to be necessarily a fallacious claim, but doesn’t sufficiently explain the lack of women in the tech field. There are women who work in that industry and they’re as social as any other woman. Author needed to dig deeper for an explanation. He needed to speak to female coworkers and ask them why they got into the tech field. This would allow him to understand more of why women enter and better understand why some women may not.

Bullet number two is a similar half-truth. It has been noted that women have difficulty obtaining raises, but you can’t claim that women wanting to be liked is the sole explanation. He’s jumping to conclusions. There can be other reasons for why women don’t get or don’t ask for raises. Could that be true on average? Maybe. There is also no citation for this claim.

The third bullet point is just ignorant. Women work high stress jobs. The majority of nurses are women and that is a very high stress position. He didn’t do enough research or think about the positions that women hold in our society. He’s acting like women just prefer to work as secretaries and not ask for raises because they want to be liked and can’t handle stress. Third bullet puts a sour taste in my mouth.

Mr. Damore jumps again to a conclusion and states that we should stop assuming sexism is solely responsible for the gender gap. I wouldn’t go that far. Sexism is likely a part of the reason for gender gaps. It is not wholly responsible, but it is an element.

I agree that some men take on high-paying positions for status, but others do enjoy their work. Not every CEO is just in it for the status. What’s odd to me about that paragraph is that he both claims that men take on jobs for status, but then lists a bunch of low status jobs that men work. If status drove men, then why would they be garbage collectors? He throws out this work-related death stat, but I don’t feel that is relevant to this discussion.

His top suggestion is the best one he makes in this list. But that doesn’t only pertain to women, that can apply to all people. Finding a way to add more socializing into coding can make it a more appealing field to work in. But this does not explain why women would not want to be leaders in the technology if they are already within it. Those women are interested in coding. This would be more for women outside of the technology field.

I don’t see how point two is relevant to his claims. A woman who is good enough to get a job at Google has a spirit of competition within her. Those jobs are not handed out. If they’ve made it that far, they should want more once they are in the company. What needs to be focused on is how many women desire to be leaders and why they do. What is preventing them from becoming leaders? If they aren’t any, let’s ask women why they don’t want to be leaders. We can’t assume that they have less of a drive for competition. His link about education is not relevant to this discussion.

Suggesting that women cannot handle leadership positions due to stress is where he got into trouble and what drove Google to fire him. It’s a sexist assumption that women shy away from positions because they fear the stress. It’s what did him in.

Work-life balance is a good topic to bring up, but his suggestion is for women to work part time. How is this a reasonable solution? How will they pay their bills? Why is he assuming it’s simply too much for women to handle a full-time technology job?

Now his last point here invalidates the entire paper. The crux of his argument is that biological traits are responsible for women not succeeding in the tech field. These traits are innate and universal across cultures. It’s a nature over nurture argument. Now he’s saying men need to be allowed to take on more feminine traits by society. That’s a nurture over nature argument. If men’s traits and desires can be changed through societal influence, why can’t the same be true for women?

Did Google state that they were going to try and hold back others who worked extra hours or took on more stress? He’s afraid that will happen and have disastrous consequences. What has led him to this fear? As far as I can tell, Google is doing great work as a company? What disastrous consequences is he talking about? What evidence does he have that something terrible is going to happen?

The first bullet-point I agree with. Mentors and classes should be open to anyone who needs help regardless of gender or race. If people are excluded because of their race even if they are white, that is wrong. Help should be available to everyone who can benefit from it.

What special treatment for “diversity” candidates is he speaking of? I clicked the link for his lowering the bar comment, but it leads to a private forum. Had there a controversial hiring of a “diversity” candidate? He creates an us vs. them mentality with his use of quotation marks. How does he know that these “diversity” hires aren’t just good enough to work at Google? Is every non-white man hire a diversity hire? He’s not accepting for what they can do. If he has a personal experience of working with someone hired to meet a diversity quota who could not do the work, then he should provide that as evidence.

He hasn’t had much evidence of his own. This memo has been the kettle calling the pot black. He calls social constructionism a myth but earlier he had mentioned that society needs to allow men to be more feminine. Did I misread that? I agree that the gender wage gap is a myth. In this paragraph I sense frustration. Like some “diversity” candidate got hired through a program and he felt that they hadn’t worked hard to get that job. And he’s afraid it’s going to mess up Google.

These are his concluding thoughts. People are biased towards women due to a biological need to protect them. Men are disposable and cannot voice gripes about their gender issues without being shamed. Society believes differences between genders is due to men oppressing women, but the grass isn’t always greener on the other side. However society ignores the pains of men and spends its resources on helping women.

Is he wrong here? I share some of the same sentiment. Very difficult for men to discuss gender issues without being negatively labeled. I don’t know if that comes from biological bias towards women. From what I’ve seen, it’s because one side believes their opinions are morally correct and to oppose them is to be evil. They have very black and white thinking on issues where it may be more complicated. A good example of this would be Donald Trump voters. It is easy to label all Trump voters as evil racists, but that is not the case for all of them. Some people voted for Obama and then switched over to Trump. That was why he won the election. So within his voter-base were people who were not evil racists.

Men as the disposable gender is a subject that intrigues me, but I don’t feel it has much place in a memo stating that biological differences between men and women are responsible for a lack of women in the tech field. We aren’t discussing war. People are sitting around in a room punching code. What does it matter if men are disposable in this context?

If what he says is true and society does favor women, why doesn’t society give them more positions in the lucrative tech field then?

It’s kind of sad that he writes about people afraid of being fired for their comments and that men are labeled misogynists for discussing gender issues because that’s exactly what happened to him.

Google does not sound like a fun place to work if this gentlemen thinks it is a psychologically unsafe environment. It is very concerning that he believes this. What have they done to make him feel unsafe at work?

He wants people to be treated as individuals but has said we should create programs for women because on average they are more agreeable, more anxious and less driven for status. That’s not treating people as individuals.

Diversity in the work place will remain a moral issue so long as people are discriminated against because of who they are and how they were born. That will not go away.

I agree that conservatives who are reasonable and professional should not be alienated.

Programs that exclude others based on their race shouldn’t exist in the workplace. They should be open to everyone.

“Discriminating just to increase the representation of women in tech is as
misguided and biased as mandating increases for women’s representation in the
homeless, work-related and violent deaths, prisons, and school dropouts.”

I wouldn’t equate trying to get girls jobs as the same as believing women should be violently murdered and sent to prison at the same numbers of men. People just want women to be well-off and to have a chance to make a good living like any of the men in the field. Very strange comparison.

Criticism of the diversity programs should be permitted. Google ought to have an anonymous suggestion box where people can leave comments without risk of repercussions. This can help to improve their programs and allow employees to feel psychologically safe.

Open discussion is very important to Mr. Damore. Google should have a forum for this. He makes Google sound like a terrifying place to work where the wrong opinion can get you thrown out the door. When you speak up, you are shamed into silence.

But why would we deemphasize empathy? We need that to understand how to better get women into the field? We should rely solely on numbers in that case. We have to get straight to the people. Numbers only tell a part of the story. The methodology behind the numbers have to be examined. When analyzing human behavior, we should pay attention to the individual’s emotions.

The science of human nature isn’t an exact science. I’ve read many psychology books and many of them state that there are failings in their findings and more research needs to be done. You can’t apply the findings to the general population. I just finished a psychology book called The Dark Side of Close Relationships. In one of the last sections in the book, they come to the conclusion that social rejection may do more harm to a person’s well-being than social acceptance does good. But the study accepts that there are limitations to the collection of the data and the responses of the subjects involved in the research. So while the information suggests one thing, it’s possible it may be another.

I do not believe Mr. Damore deserved to be fired for this memo. He has a passion for the subject and speaks for others who are afraid to speak themselves. He is ignorant on some fronts and draws conclusions without substantial evidence. I believe Google could have worked out a solution. If many employees feel that the work environment is psychologically unsafe, that cannot be conducive to being productive. Google takes diversity very seriously so they should have allowed Mr. Damore, female coworkers and leaders to have a discussion on his views. It would be an open forum where they could each learn more about each other’s perspectives. Allow the women to respond to his memo and set him straight on where they believe he is wrong. Let employees give feedback on how they feel about diversity and how they feel about Google’s current practices.

Mr. Damore’s points on work-related deaths and society favoring women over men would best be left to another paper discussing the position of men in contemporary society. I do not read any maliciousness behind his words, but I do sense frustration. I understand why Google fired him. His memo brought a negative light onto the company but I wish they hadn’t. By firing him, they could be contributing to a psychologically unsafe work environment that Mr. Damore describes. They should have found a way to work with him and see where they could make changes.

The answer to this question has escaped humanity. Philosophers like Plato, Ayn Rand, and Immanuel Kant each had their own well-thought-out answers, but they’re all dead so who cares what they think. I say man is evil. I only need one piece of evidence to prove my claim.

The public bathroom.

We’ve all experienced one. Opened that door, looking to complete our most basic bodily function. We’ve all kicked open that stall door and hoped for the best. Then we saw the true nature of humanity lying on the ground next to the toilet. Festering. Leaving a smell in the air that beckoned filthy flying disease-spreading creatures.

On the walls in those stalls, we can see all that man is. The bathroom stall is a private place for a person. No one is allowed in. The person can collect their thoughts and write any messages they choose. No one knows who writes the words. The anonymity of the stall wall reveals the darkness of man. For what does he share in his private moment but the worst words and the worst sentiments. The foulest language in our tongue greets the person who wishes to evacuate their bowels and be on their way. The person has to sit with their cheeks spread on toilet paper, holding their nose and forced to look at crude drawings of genitalia and racial epithets. In their most vulnerable moment, they find that they have been betrayed by their fellow man.

Those people then embrace their own evil. They sit up and leave without flushing. They contribute to the depravity on the walls. They unleash their load on the floor. They leak out onto the toilet paper. They leave the stall in worse shape than they found it. A revenge for the person before that afflicts the person after.

No person who leaves the bathroom leaves with a smile on their face. Their face is a contorted one of frustration with a touch of misery.

Hollywood had a clear message that they wanted to express during the Oscars. They beat every viewer over the head with it for three hours.

Diversity emboldens us. Empathy and tolerance bring us together. Fear only serves to divide us. And that we must resist.

Last year’s #OscarsSoWhite controversy and the rise of President Trump set the stage for tonight’s award choices. A concerted effort was made to nominate diverse people and films. A record-setting number of black people won an Academy Award. The winner of Best Picture was not the heavily-favored and heavily-white La La Land, but the queer and black, Moonlight.

The same message was echoed in the speeches made by the Academy Award winners.

“This goes out to all those black and brown boys and girls and non-gender conforming who don’t see themselves, we are trying to show you, you and us, so thank you, thank you, this is for you.” said Tarell Alvin McCraney, writer of Moonlight.

The director of The Salesman, Asghar Farhadi, chose not to attend the Oscars due to the travel ban but left a statement to be read from him:

“Filmmakers can turn their cameras to capture shared human qualities and break stereotypes of various nationalities and religions. They create empathy between us and others. An empathy which we need today more than ever.”

Strong words that no reasonable person could find fault with. Not could they find fault with the message. But in some brief moments last night, Hollywood’s true smug elitist nature bubbled to the surface.

The first such moment came during actor Mark Rylance’s introduction for the Best Supporting Actress category.

“Opposition is really good in society… Sometimes, the most supportive thing is to oppose. Something women seem to be better at than men, is opposing without hatred.”

This was a sexist blanket statement. If the roles were reversed, people would be up in arms. The purpose here was to empower women which made it a good lead for the award, but he bashed men too. This statement was contrary to the message of the night.

Another brief lapse came during Viola Davis’s acceptance speech.

“People ask me all the time, ‘What kind of stories do you want to tell, Viola?’ And I say,’“Exhume those bodies.’ Exhume those stories — the stories of the people who dreamed big and never saw those dreams to fruition. People who fell in love and lost. I became an artist, and thank God I did because we are the only profession that celebrates what it means to live a life. ”

The speech was impassioned, raw, and inspirational. But she also essentially that only she and her artist friends celebrated the human condition. She set herself above the common person. Struck me the wrong way.

And finally, during a long horrendously unfunny bit, Jimmy Kimmel brought out unsuspecting tourists to meet celebrities sitting in the front row. All the stars were laughing at the normal people showing up during their big award show. As if the average person was something worth laughing at. The skit had no punchline to it other than that.

As the tourists awkwardly made their way past the celebrities, Kimmel asked a young Asian tourist what her name was. She had to tell him twice as he struggled to pronounce it.

He then joked that it wasn’t a real name like her husband’s name, Patrick.

NIGHTCRAWLER

Louis Bloom

Antiheroes come in shades of grey. Lou is the darkest of dark grey. He would be black in any story that didn’t feature him as the protagonist. There is not much redeeming to him. He is willing to manipulate and harm people to justify his own ends. Dan Gilroy, the writer of the film, describes him as a sociopath and refers to the film as an antihero success story.

The introductory scene brings Lou’s darkness out in a quick two pages. It is not available on YouTube unfortunately. So here is the scene in screenplay form.

In two pages, Lou gets established as a creepy man who shouldn’t be trusted by people. Common story convention says to introduce your main character doing something that shows us who we are. So we begin here with our sociopathic antihero cutting a chainlink fence. As he notices that he is not alone, he turns and gives this charming yet unsettling smile.

It’s not in the screenplay but it gives us our first impression of Lou. This is the first we actually see of him as the shot prior to this had him in the dark. Jake Gyllenhall killed it with his starved coyote look.

He seems so feral in both appearance and in how he moves. When the security guard’s light hits him, he reacts like a nocturnal animal caught in headlights. He gives his first words, a lie to get the guard’s defenses down. He feigns not knowing what he’s doing. We can tell he’s done this sort of thing his whole life. There is no worry nor tremble in Lou once he’s caught.

He smiles wider and advances toward the officer, where he can get a better look at what he’s dealing with. His confidence grows once he sees that his opposition is only a security guard. He takes out his ID, continues his lie until he’s close enough to pounce.

We are given this image to close out the opening sequence.

The fate of the guard is left up to our imagination. After seeing the entire film through and see what Lou is capable of, it’s scary to imagine just what he could have done to this man.

Despite having the endorsement of the current president and Lebron James, millions of Wall Streets Dollars in her pocket, hundreds of emotionally-manipulative advertisements being played on television, polling results that had her winning in a landslide, and the mainstream media (minus Fox News and Breitbart) by her side, Hillary Clinton will not be the next president of the United States.

People are scrambling for answers, in shock. This could be seen on the news reports tonight. The reporters looked taken aback. As Trump’s surge began, they stuttered through explanations. They held off on declaring him the winner. They tried to twist the numbers to give Hillary a chance. They had convinced themselves that the monster would never win. The polls said he couldn’t. But the time came when they could no longer deny reality.

The American People wanted Trump to be their 45th president, not Hillary Clinton. Stories will be written about who is to blame for this debacle and the reaction surrounding it.

The real story here is the utter failure by the mainstream media to remain unbiased. We had publication after publication come out and tell they endorsed. If they had stuck to the facts, they would have been able to see this coming.Instead they are left with their mouths on the ground, struggling to make sense of it. All their attempts to destroy and condemn Trump only served to help him get his message to the people who wanted to hear it.

Now hell has frozen over and Donald Trump will be president. President Trump. Never thought I would see a black man be president and I never thought I’d see Donald Trump be president. Life certainly keeps things interesting.

Audiences have grown tired of the traditional heroic story. A virtuous person rising up against the forces of evil and darkness is saved for children’s stories nowadays. Adults are bored with idealistic heroes. They want flawed individuals at the center of their stories.

What is it about antiheroes that audiences love?

I have been watching films and television shows about antihero protagonists to find out the answer to that question.

DEATH NOTE

Light Yagami

Every story needs the right protagonist. Death Note has a money one in the god of the new world, Light Yagami. A story about a high school student that finds a notebook that can kill people is a novel concept by itself. When that high school student is a genius sociopath with a god complex, you get the intriguing cat and mouse game that is Death Note.

The Character:

Under other circumstances, Light would be a traditional hero. He has many heroic qualities. He is highly intelligent. Determined. Battling against the evils of society. His major flaw is his hubris. That same flaw is shared by many ancient Greek Heroes.

However, Light Yagami is a sociopath who revels in the destruction of his opposition. He murders thousands of criminals over the course of the story. He is so driven to his goal that he will manipulate anyone to achieve his ends. He believes he has the right to judge the world and no one should dare stand in his way. Those who do deserve death.

Pivotal Scene:

After killing Raye Penbar and a team of FBI agents sent to investigate him, Light Yagami realizes he has left himself exposed. Penbar’s fiancee, Naomi Misora discovers a clue that could implicate Light in the murders. Light runs into her and finds out her discovery through idle chitchat. He asks for her name. With a name and face, he can kill anyone. She gives him a fake one. With his life on the line, Light slyly gets the woman’s real name and kills her.

I chose this scene as it shows all the facets of Light’s character. This woman is his first real challenge. If he fails, he will be arrested and executed. He acts out of survival. He gains her trust with subtle lies and compliments. Once he has won, he tells her he is the killer the police are looking for. By then it is too late for Naomi to do anything.

On the surface, this scene is a man killing a young woman and getting away with it, a villainous endeavor. But this scene is a battle of wits. Two intelligent people go back and forth until one comes out the victor. Ultimately Light uses Naomi’s emotional attachments against her.

This scene is very well-thought out and logical, among the best in all of Death Note.

Things To Be Learned:

An intriguing protagonist only remains intriguing against strong opposition. The eccentric L. Lawliet is Light’s rival in this story. L is the world’s great detective. He is as ruthless and cunning as Light is. He has the support of the police force and applies immense pressure onto the wannabe god. The cat-and-mouse game between the two of them is the backbone of this story. The story drops in quality after Light defeats L.

It’s important to not try to force the audience to feel a certain way about characters. Death Note lets the audience decide on whether they want to side with Light or L. The story teller should be putting on a show, not trying to push morality onto the audience.

Closing Thoughts:

Death Note‘s Light Yagami is the reason this anime is able to appeal to people who do not usually enjoy animation. He draws the audience in. People want to see him caught. People want to see him get away with everything. No one would want to be friends with him, but we do all want to see how he gets past his next big obstacle.

I look forward to the upcoming live action adaptation of Death Note. There have been interesting casting choices made. The portrayal of Light Yagami will be the key to the success of the adaptation. If the writers and director accurately transfer his character to the screen, then American audiences will be in for a treat.